Soviet leaders and statesmen

Main articles: Soviet leaders, Soviet Premiers, Soviet heads of state, and Soviet Foreign Ministers

• Viktor Abakumov, head of the SMERSH counter-intelligence agency and the MGB secret police
  

  

  Leonid Brezhnev
• Yury Andropov, head of KGB under Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union in 1982–84
• Lavrenty Beria, chief of the Soviet security under Stalin, supervised the Soviet wartime production during World War II and than the Soviet atomic bomb project
• Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union in 1964–82, oversaw relative economic stagnation but less strained foreign relations
• Nikolai Bukharin, Politburo member in the 1920s, editor of government newspapers Pravda and Izvestia, author of The ABC of Communism
• Nikolai Bulganin, Soviet Premier in 1937–38 and in 1955–58, supporter of Khrushchev
• Konstantin Chernenko, leader of the Soviet Union in 1984–85
• Georgy Chicherin, the first Soviet Foreign Minister
• Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, worked on the problem of street children socialization
  

  

  Vladimir Lenin
• Mikhail Gorbachev the last General Secretary of the Communist Party, launched the policies of glasnost and perestroika, the first and only president of the Soviet Union who led it to its collapse
• Andrei Gromyko, Soviet Foreign Minister in 1957–1985, known as the "Mr. No" in the West
• Lazar Kaganovich, the "Iron Lazar", Politburo member in 1930–57, oversaw the Soviet collectivization and industrialization, a close associate of Stalin
• Mikhail Kalinin, formal Head of state of the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s
• Lev Kamenev, one of the Soviet leaders in the early 1920s
• Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union in 1953–64, launched de-Stalinisation and many erratic policies, backed the progress of the early Soviet space program
• Alexei Kosygin, Soviet Premier under Brezhnev, author of the eventually stifled Kosygin reform which included elements of capitalist management
  

  

  Vyacheslav Molotov
• Vladimir Lenin, founder of Bolshevik party, the leader of the October Revolution, the first Soviet head of state in 1917–22, founder of the Soviet Union, creator of Leninism
• Maxim Litvinov, Soviet Foreign Minister in the 1930s
• Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first Soviet Minister of Enlightenment
• Georgy Malenkov, a close associate of Stalin, Soviet Premier and one of the leaders after Stalin's death
• Anastas Mikoyan, Trade Minister and Food Minister for many years, called "the Survivor" for a very long high profile political career
• Vyacheslav Molotov Soviet Premier in the 1930s, Foreign Minister during World War II, a close associate of Stalin
• Valentin Pavlov, the first to assume the title Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, led the August Coup in attempt to depose Gorbachev
• Nikolai Podgorny, formal head of state under Brezhnev
  

  

  Joseph Stalin
• Alexei Rykov, Soviet Premier in 1924–30
• Nikolai Ryzhkov, Soviet Premier under Gorbachev
• Ivan Silayev, Soviet Premier in 1991 and Minister of Civil Aviation in the 1980s
• Joseph Stalin, the longest ruling Soviet leader, proponent of socialism in one country policy, oversaw the Soviet collectivization and industrialization, Generalissimo of the Soviet Union who led the country to victory in the Great Patriotic War, oversaw the post-war economy restoration, formed the Eastern bloc and engaged in the Cold War
• Yakov Sverdlov, the first de jure head of the Russian SFSR
• Eduard Shevardnadze, the last Soviet Foreign Minister, later a President of Georgia
• Mikhail Suslov, leading ideologist during the Brezhnev era
  

  

  Leon Trotsky
• Nikolai Tikhonov, Soviet Premier in the early 1980s
• Leon Trotsky, the second-in-command during the October Revolution, the first Soviet Foreign Minister (concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk), founder of the Red Army, Defense Minister in 1918–25, proponent of the world revolution and creator of Trotskyism, founder of the Fourth International
• Andrey Vyshinsky, Soviet Prosecutor General under Stalin, Foreign Minister in 1949–53
• Genrikh Yagoda, Interior Minister and head of the NKVD in the 1930s, executed
• Gennady Yanayev, the leader of the August Coup that attempted to depose Gorbachev
• Nikolai Yezhov, Interior Minister and head of the NKVD during the period of the Great Purge, was executed soon after
• Grigory Zinoviev, one of the Soviet leaders in the early 1920s